Templeport Parish Freeholders Registered To Vote in 1825 / 26

In order to be a registered voter a person had to have a freehold property. A freeholder was a person who possessed his estate whether in land or houses, in fee (i.e. for himself and his heirs forever), or on a lease for one or more lives. Since 1793 Catholics who held such freeholds were eligible to vote.

The number of registered voters in Co. Cavan in 1826 is officially given as 7814, of whom 480 were £50 freeholders, 218 were £20 freeholders and the rest, 7110, were 40 shilling freeholders. Almost all forty-shilling freeholders were leasehold freeholders.

A landlord created these freeholds primarily if not exclusively in order to create his political power for it was the accepted practice that a freeholder cast his vote for a landlord or for the person whom the landlord designated. If he voted against his landlord’s wishes, he could easily find himself denied a renewal, on the death of the person on whose life he had taken the lease, or else called on to pay arrears of rent.

It was thus a hazardous venture especially on the part of the 40 shilling freeholder, who was poor and utterly dependent on his patch of land, to disobey his landlord’s wishes on election day. Votes had to be given openly in the presence of the agents of the candidates. A landlord thus infallibly knew how his tenant voted.

(Dr. T.P. Cunningham Breifne Historical Journal 1962)

The list below is only of those in Templeport Parish who registered in 1825-1826